Farmer, Fannie

Farmer, Fannie (1857–1915) one of the best known American cookery writers. Disabled by a paralysing illness in her teens, which halted her education and left her with a permanent limp, she seemed unlikely to become a public figure. However, at the age of 30, in 1887, she enrolled in the Boston Cooking School (see lincoln, Mary) and only five years later became its principal, a position she held until she resigned in 1902 to open her own school, Miss Farmer’s School of Cookery.

Farmer’s approach to cooking was scientific. She recognized the relationship between sound nutrition and health, and insisted on precise measurements (she was the first to introduce the concept of level measurements in recipes). Her major work, often dubbed ‘the Bible of the American kitchen’, is The Boston Cooking School Cook Book (1st edn 1896). The book was considered a risk by its original publisher, but by the time of the 13th revised edition (1990) almost 4,000,000 copies had been sold. A comprehensive, lucidly written, and well-organized manual, it begins with the chemical constituents of different foods, and progresses through the chemistry of cooking processes to the recipes themselves.